Today, Hollywood dominates pop culture. People everywhere love to watch and discuss their favorite blockbusters or prestige television shows. But the dominance of the motion picture today is the result of its popularity in its early years. Interestingly, this early history of film takes us to the early 1900s in New Jersey. As such, our newspapers provide us a fascinating look at the early days of American cinema.
In the late 1800s, experiments were made by several figures to create the illusion of movement by displaying photos in a fast sequence, but the most publicized success of the era was the creation of the Kinetograph in West Orange, New Jersey. William Dickson, assistant of Thomas Edison, had created one of the first cameras to record motion, and not long after, Edison revealed the Kinetoscope, a small device in which viewers could see the recorded pictures. In 1894, the earliest Kinetoscope parlors opened, allowing viewers, for a small fee, to use the devices to watch the short films. To provide films for the new devices, Edison’s lab also became the first film studio.
However, the limits of the Kinetoscope, only allowing one viewer to watch a film at a time, were evident to many and a race to create a motion picture projector started soon after. Although many argued they had been first, as an article in the July 1, 1926 issue of The Monmouth Inquirer covering the history of film noted, ultimately, it was the French Lumiere brothers who can take the credit, and their projector “made its debut in March 1895, under the name of the cinematograph.” The projector would quickly become the favored way to display films.
Given film’s short length and the focus of films on visual spectacles, American film initially found success as a segment in vaudeville productions, but as film length grew and films became more narratively complex, they began to become the primary feature of shows. As the Palisadian noted in an August 14, 1915 article title “Average Motion Pictures,” “No longer are [viewers] satisfied with the simple and almost childish one-reel drama of a few years ago; they demand something more complicated in plot and free from the hacknied ways of conveying an idea as used by the producers of old films.” As such, films rapidly developed a closer resemblance to the narratives of theatrical productions while developing a unique visual language.
As film’s popularity expanded, New York City became the hub of film production. The city and neighboring municipalities became the stomping ground of film’s rising stars, as expressed in an article in the September 23, 1916 Palisadian covering Fort Lee’s rise to film prominence.
With the growth of film’s popularity, Edison’s film company found itself facing many competitors. In order to ensure control of the market, Edison and the nine other largest film companies established the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC) in 1908, a trust that controlled the major motion picture patents and which established an exclusivity contract for film from the Eastman Kodak Company. Unsurprisingly, this was met with backlash from the film companies independent of the trust. It was also resisted by the U.S. government, who brought legal action against the company in 1912 for violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
The trust ultimately lost this legal battle in 1918 and was dissolved. Additionally, the trust companies’ resistance to innovation, such as embracing new formats and the “star system,” saw their popularity decline. The trust also helped hasten the decline of film on the East Coast. Hollywood had already received some attention from film producers prior to the trust’s establishment for its climate, which enabled year-round production, and when the MPPC was established in New York, independent film studios fled to California.
On the West Coast, film production of feature films exploded, and with them came many of film’s earliest stars, including figures like John Barrymore, of the famed Barrymore acting family, and comedy stars like Charlie Chaplin.
Also of note are some of the less-remembered stars of the era. One particularly striking one is Sessue Hayakawa. Despite the racism prevalent throughout the country at the time, the Japanese actor became a leading man and sex symbol on the same level as Douglas Fairbanks. Although many of his roles were stereotypical, Hayakawa used his success to found Haworth Pictures, a production company that helped him to create films where he could avoid being typecast.
Unsurprisingly, given the ever-increasing popularity of the cinema, newspapers became increasingly full of content related to the movies. Photo sections often contained publicity shots for upcoming films, like the one below from the September 26, 1924 Palisadian, featuring a shot from The Iron Horse, acclaimed director John Ford’s first major film.
Additionally, newspapers were filled with advertisements from local theaters advertising the latest “photoplays,” such as the one below featured in the November 6, 1919 issue of the Perth Amboy Evening News.
You might notice the mention at the bottom of the “Crescent Symphony Orchestra.” While silent films contained no dialogue, most theaters accompanied them with live music, although not often with a full orchestra. It was a noteworthy thing to have a symphony orchestra to accompany the latest films.
Ultimately, film had emerged from humble origins to become one of the dominant industries in America, and it would only continue to grow as it entered the era of sound film. And while cinema is embraced as art today, it was this era that helped to establish the art form as more than just a simple novelty. As famed director Cecil B. DeMille argued in an article in the October 18, 1921 Perth Amboy Evening News, cinema was one of few art forms in which other arts, like photography, music, sculpture, dance, and drama, could be engaged in in a unified production; to him, “Photoplay is greater than any other art,” and many today would heartily agree.
(Contributed by Tristan Smith)
Sources:
Cook, David A. and Robert Sklar. “History of Film.” Britannica, May 21, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/art/history-of-the-motion-picture.
Kim, Helena. “Sessue Hayakawa.” A Creative’s Guide to Asian American Media Studies, November 8, 2018. https://blogs.cornell.edu/asianammedia/2018/11/08/sessue-hayakawa/.
“Motion Picture Patents Company.” Britannica, April 28, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Motion-Picture-Patents-Company.
PBS. “The Early History of Motion Pictures.” American Experience. Accessed Jun 23, 2023. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/pickford-early-history-motion-pictures/.